Huntsville/Madison Development News (Birmingham, Montgomery: retired, clearance, toll road)

[bmrisko]

Originally Posted by AU HSV

Highlands church supposedly

Aren't they also building off Nance, north of Sprouts?

How many mega-churches do we need in this area?

[dijkstra]

Originally Posted by bmrisko

Aren't they also building off Nance, north of Sprouts?

How many mega-churches do we need in this area?

As many as there are enough foolish people to keep donating. This is another example of what equates to corporate church organizations that are generating millions of dollars in income tax free.

[RocketDawg]

Originally Posted by dijkstra

As many as there are enough foolish people to keep donating. This is another example of what equates to corporate church organizations that are generating millions of dollars in income tax free.

Any organization that are into politics should have to pay taxes. I'm ok with churches not being taxed if they stick to religion, but the minute they get into influencing political opinions and votes, then tax away. And most of them are into politics.

[AU HSV]

New NASA George C Marshall Space Flight Center building 4221 opens.
Marshall’s refurbishment of the 4200 complex began with the opening of Building 4220 in 2014. Both 4220 and 4221 are part of NASA’s "repair-by-replacement" plan -- tearing down costly, aging structures and replacing them with new facilities offering measurable health, safety and cost benefits.
Building 4221 is undergoing certification by the U.S. Green Building Council for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, the national standard for development of high-performance, sustainable structures. The new structure will be the ninth LEED-certified facility at Marshall, which also is home to NASA’s first LEED-certified structure: Building 4600, the anchor of Marshall’s high-tech engineering complex, which opened in 2006.

[AU HSV]

Details on the half ass I-565 solution. a wreck will shut this road down for hours...
There is not a correctly designed highway in North Alabama, because aldot always looks for the cheapest most minimal solution.

Curtis Vincent, the ALDOT chief engineer for the northern district, said he had studied I-565 for years and researched its construction. He determined that the highway was wide enough already to add another lane in each direction – and that’s including the short-length bridges along the route.
In short, Vincent said the shoulders on I-565 were built to the same specifications as the travel lanes and needed only to be paved to be utilized.
And suddenly a solution was discovered. (it took years to discover it?)


"I kept looking at it and I thought that shoulder is 14 feet wide," Vincent said. "It's a sufficient shoulder we can utilize because it's got the buildup like the mainline. We wouldn't have to reconstruct it to put traffic on it. So we started exploring that option."
The key, Vincent said, was the bridges. Did they have the capacity to add a third lane? NO
"Those bridges are 40 feet (wide) from wall to wall," he said. "Even if you had three 12-foot lanes, that would allow you four feet for a shoulder."

A tight fit, maybe, but a workable solution.
"It's still going to be safe," Vincent said. "The lane width will still be the same. We may have two 12-foot lanes and an 11-foot lane across the bridges and a minimal shoulder. But people drive across bridges every day that have less than a two-foot shoulder.
"These are very short bridges -- 200-250 feet long. Driving at 75 mph !!, you're only on that bridge for a couple of seconds."
Vincent said the widening will begin just west of County Line Road in Limestone County and stretch about 7 miles to the west to I-65. That means the two-lane sections in each direction on I-565 from Wall-Triana Highway to County Line Road will remain two lanes and some bottlenecking for rush hour traffic will likely still occur.

Vincent acknowledged that issue and said it remains on the ALDOT radar to address in the not-too-distant future. The highway can be widened to the inside, Vincent said, and ALDOT controls that right-of-way.
The I-565 widening is also still awaiting formal approval from the Federal Highway Administration, Vincent said.
and there it is, the get out of doing it card. If the FHA says no then what?
So that 100 million will be spent elsewhere south of the Tennessee River, granted the money wasn't there but now whatever was gonna go to I-565 will go somewhere else far away.
https://www.al.com/news/2019/04/how-...den-i-565.html

[bmrisko]

This whole area is a giant CF in regards to infrastructure...

[Hoping4Huntsville]

Originally Posted by AU HSV

Details on the half ass I-565 solution. a wreck will shut this road down for hours...
There is not a correctly designed highway in North Alabama, because aldot always looks for the cheapest most minimal solution.

Curtis Vincent, the ALDOT chief engineer for the northern district, said he had studied I-565 for years and researched its construction. He determined that the highway was wide enough already to add another lane in each direction – and that’s including the short-length bridges along the route.
In short, Vincent said the shoulders on I-565 were built to the same specifications as the travel lanes and needed only to be paved to be utilized.
And suddenly a solution was discovered. (it took years to discover it?)


"I kept looking at it and I thought that shoulder is 14 feet wide," Vincent said. "It's a sufficient shoulder we can utilize because it's got the buildup like the mainline. We wouldn't have to reconstruct it to put traffic on it. So we started exploring that option."
The key, Vincent said, was the bridges. Did they have the capacity to add a third lane? NO
"Those bridges are 40 feet (wide) from wall to wall," he said. "Even if you had three 12-foot lanes, that would allow you four feet for a shoulder."

A tight fit, maybe, but a workable solution.
"It's still going to be safe," Vincent said. "The lane width will still be the same. We may have two 12-foot lanes and an 11-foot lane across the bridges and a minimal shoulder. But people drive across bridges every day that have less than a two-foot shoulder.
"These are very short bridges -- 200-250 feet long. Driving at 75 mph !!, you're only on that bridge for a couple of seconds."
Vincent said the widening will begin just west of County Line Road in Limestone County and stretch about 7 miles to the west to I-65. That means the two-lane sections in each direction on I-565 from Wall-Triana Highway to County Line Road will remain two lanes and some bottlenecking for rush hour traffic will likely still occur.

Vincent acknowledged that issue and said it remains on the ALDOT radar to address in the not-too-distant future. The highway can be widened to the inside, Vincent said, and ALDOT controls that right-of-way.
The I-565 widening is also still awaiting formal approval from the Federal Highway Administration, Vincent said.
and there it is, the get out of doing it card. If the FHA says no then what?
So that 100 million will be spent elsewhere south of the Tennessee River, granted the money wasn't there but now whatever was gonna go to I-565 will go somewhere else far away.
https://www.al.com/news/2019/04/how-...den-i-565.html

Wow! Having worked for a DOT in another state (and currently working for another state agency here in AL) this seems pretty "half a&&ed" and not a good solution at all. When will Alabama start realizing that temporary solutions are not the basis upon which to build a future?

[Justin Scott]

When will ALDOT consider upgrading North Alabama’s highways to interstate grade or building more interstates? I'm in Los Angeles, but all it’s going to take is another ten years of development or another 150,000 people and North Alabama is screwed in regards to traffic. Huntsville is literally a rising star city and Alabama refuses to fund transportation properly.

[cooldiver]

Originally Posted by AU HSV

That means the two-lane sections in each direction on I-565 from Wall-Triana Highway to County Line Road will remain two lanes and some bottlenecking for rush hour traffic will likely still occur.

Insanity.


I'm sure glad the legislature raised the gas tax to fix all the roads elsewhere in the state.


We don't even get the US 72 widening that Mayor Battle signed a deal for years ago. Maybe they can pave those shoulders as well. The shoulders are just dirt, but that's good enough for ALDon't.

[Chris_NorthHSV]

A wreck can easily take out 2 lanes with this setup they want to go with. Don't even want to think of an 18-wheeler being involved. Yeah, it's pretty much what we thought. Alabama needs to get out of the 1950s. The state will not go back in time. It's time to move forward and do the things necessary to accomodate the people.

I-565 needs to be 4-5 lanes all the way out to I-65